Old Fences, New Neighbors

Rating:
Summary: A realistic look at changes in one rural American town.
Review: Peter Decker has distilled twenty-five years of ranching in Ridgeway, a previous life as a combat soldier, seaman, and as journalist into a warm but unsentimental book that appreciates the values of the real West as opposed to the Disneyfied, Hollywoodenized versions that glorify a time and a way of life that never was. Decker's reality is far more interesting.

His chapters on what life is like on a ranch, what it is like for an outsider to try to find acceptance in a community like Ridgeway, what the frustrations are and what are the real joys would be enough to make this book well worth the reading for anyone who wants to know about life in a small town in the American West at the turn of our century. But there is much more.

Decker has woven the land, the history, the people and the present into a gem of a book. The issues of how rural people with their values are affected when the migration pattern of countryside to city are reversed can be applied to small towns all over the country. Decker does not offer solutions but his clear-eyed warmth and his understanding of people, the strengths and their failings makes fascinating reading.